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00:00a historic moment here in France former French president Nicolas Sarkozy found
00:16guilty of criminal conspiracy and sentenced to five years in prison and in
00:21a surprise decision the court ruled that Sarkozy will have to go to prison
00:25even if he appeals that prompted this defiant reaction from the former
00:30president have a listen ladies and gentlemen what happened today in this
00:44Paris criminal courtroom is extremely concerning for the rule of law and for
00:52the trust we have in the justice system more than ten years of
01:01investigation the millions of euros spent to find Libyan funding that the
01:08criminal court has just said could not be found in my campaign and for good
01:13reason the court went further by solemnly declaring that the media part document
01:20that was at the origin of these proceedings was and I quote a fake
01:29political document media part chitale origin the city procedure it they just
01:39sit a fool
01:41jeter on boy it I was sent before this court for four offenses
01:48for cattle daily
01:50sure 3 I was acquitted of you three of them
01:56No funding was found, no corruption, I am therefore convicted of allegedly allowing
02:07two of my colleagues to have had the idea of illegally financing my campaign.
02:24All these years, I have assumed all my responsibilities.
02:31Naturally, I did not refuse any hearings.
02:36I was taken into custody, interrogated, searched, and examined in such a way that the presiding
02:45judge said, there is no evidence of personal gain on your part, no illegal financing of
02:53my campaign, no personal gain.
03:00And the conclusion reached by this court is that I must spend five years in prison.
03:08And even though my address is known, I can be recognized on the street, and I have assumed
03:17all my responsibilities, the court has ordered the sentence to take immediate effect, so
03:23I can sleep in prison as soon as possible.
03:32I ask the French people whether they voted for me or not, whether they support me or not,
03:42to appreciate what is happening.
03:45Hatred clearly knows no bounds.
03:49I will accept my responsibilities.
03:57I will comply with the court's summons.
04:01And if they absolutely want me to sleep in prison, I will sleep in prison.
04:07But with my head held high, I am innocent.
04:12This injustice is a scandal.
04:17And I will not apologize for something I did not do.
04:22Naturally, I will appeal and I will probably have to appear before the court of appeals.
04:29Those who are attacking me so fearlessly think they are humiliating me.
04:37What they have humiliated today is France, the image of France.
04:44And if anyone has betrayed the French people, it is not me.
04:53It is this unbelievable injustice that you have just witnessed.
04:59I have no desire for revenge.
05:02I have no hatred.
05:04But let everyone understand and hear this clearly.
05:07I will fight until my last breath to prove my complete innocence.
05:13Now, this case is related to Sarkozy allegedly taking millions of euros from the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
05:23Sarkozy is alleged to have used that money to finance his 2007 presidential campaign.
05:29And in return, told Gaddafi he'd help improve his reputation in the West.
05:34A Paris court did acquit Sarkozy of all other charges in this case, including passive corruption and illegal campaign financing.
05:42Sarkozy, as you just heard, he says he is not guilty and this case is politically motivated.
05:48Let's cross now to our correspondent, Claire Pachelin, who has been outside the courtroom in Paris all day long.
05:55Claire, it's an unprecedented judgment.
05:57Tell us what the scene has been like there.
05:59Certainly.
06:00Well, when Nicolas Sarkozy came and made that statement to the press, there was a huge crowd of journalists.
06:09All of us trying to listen in, cameras, microphones, all over the place.
06:14And actually, when the judge read out the sentence, I was sitting in the courtroom and there was a gasp.
06:19Not everyone could quite get their head around this, the mandat de dépôt, so this immediate execution of the sentence and the judgment.
06:29Now, it has been rescheduled, so we're not seeing Nicolas Sarkozy going behind bars this afternoon.
06:34But the fact that even though he's appealing, this sentence and this judgment still stays intact.
06:41It's not something the public prosecution asked for and it's something that came as a surprise to many in the courtroom.
06:47Now, Sarkozy's lawyer has been speaking, saying that Sarkozy has no regrets because he is innocent.
06:53But if there's one thing he regrets, it's having not managed to convince the courtroom.
06:58What's interesting is that at the beginning of the hearing, the hearing lasted more than three hours,
07:03the judgment actually for Sarkozy, the judge cleared three of the four accusations against him.
07:10So he was cleared of illegal campaign financing, he was cleared of embezzlement of public funds, of Libyan public funds
07:17and he was also cleared of passive corruption.
07:20He was found guilty of having been part of a criminal conspiracy.
07:24And despite being cleared for three out of the four accusations, he was given a very, very serious sentence today in Paris.
07:32Now, Claire, in the soundbite that we just heard of Sarkozy speaking in reaction to his sentence,
07:38he talked about Mediapart. Can you explain for our non-French audience what Mediapart is and what he says its role was?
07:49Certainly, Mediapart's role was huge in this case.
07:53Mediapart is an investigative news website here in France.
07:57It breaks stories, big stories, frequently.
08:00But two journalists in particular have worked very hard now for several years on this story.
08:05And it was back in 2012 that Mediapart published a document that it said had been signed by a member of the Libyan regime,
08:16basically writing in black and white that money had been transferred from the Libyan regime to the coffers of Nicolas Sarkozy's electoral campaign.
08:27Now, the judge said in court that it was deemed that this document was actually a fake.
08:32So, despite that, despite that, this very clear judgment for Nicolas Sarkozy, criminal conspiracy,
08:41where the judge really came down hard was that he was found guilty of having been part of a criminal conspiracy
08:47when he was interior minister. He had responsibilities.
08:52And the judge said that having been in that position and having been part of a criminal conspiracy,
08:57that undermined the French public's confidence in the state, in the state of France.
09:03And this criminal conspiracy, what does that mean?
09:05The idea is that Nicolas Sarkozy, according to the judge, was part of a group which was planning,
09:12which was preparing for supporters, collaborators of Nicolas Sarkozy, including Claude Guayant,
09:18who was one of his ministers, part of his campaign, a real right-hand man to Sarkozy.
09:23He was found guilty as well today, convicted, given a six-year prison sentence.
09:27But he is an elderly man with health issues, so we do not expect him to go physically behind bars.
09:32The judge said that Nicolas Sarkozy had been clearly aware of what was going on.
09:37And so, even though no money was actually found, no Gaddafi money was actually found in the coffers of Sarkozy's campaign,
09:45for the judge, he was still part of this criminal conspiracy.
09:48And that was very serious, particularly given that he was an interior minister at the time.
09:52Claire, thank you so much.
09:54Please do stay with us, because I also want to bring in two additional voices to help us understand this huge story.
10:01First, my colleague, James André, who has been closely following this case,
10:06and then also a French politics expert, Paul Smith.
10:10He's a professor at the University of Nottingham.
10:12Thank you guys for being here for this.
10:15James, let's go to you first.
10:17Can you help us better understand Sarkozy's sentence and how it fits historically into French political scandals?
10:28Has there been a president in France that has been handed a sentence like this before, gone to prison?
10:36It has actually never happened in recent history, at least the Fifth Republic for sure.
10:41Indeed, the only other president that was sentenced to anything in recent French history is Jacques Chirac for the fake jobs at the Paris City Hall,
10:56where indeed he was condemned for having handed fake jobs to people in order to pay them salaries.
11:02And he did not go to prison for that, actually.
11:05This would be the first, this will be the first time when Nicolas Sarkozy indeed goes to prison.
11:11And this is something which is quite important, which is the fact that indeed this decision is taken with, as it is called in French law,
11:19mandat de dépôt différé.
11:21Mandat de dépôt means that, in fact, you come straight out of court and go straight to prison.
11:25Now, I know in the Anglo-Saxon system it's not always, you know, it usually is like that.
11:28You leave the courthouse to go to prison.
11:30It is not always like that in the French system.
11:32More often than not, the prison sentence comes later down the line.
11:36But in some circumstances, the court can say, right, you are going straight to prison.
11:40Mandat de dépôt.
11:41Différé means that it is not immediate.
11:43I know this is not easy to understand.
11:45But no, Nicolas Sarkozy, given that there is no risk of flight because he is too well known,
11:50because everybody knows where he lives, because he's a former president of France, he can't really flee.
11:54So he will be put in prison.
11:59But later on, he's given a little bit of time to get organized, to get his, you know, his business in correct posture in order to go to prison.
12:09Well, the judge did also say it was due to his age.
12:12He's 70 years old.
12:13And because it would be seen as humiliating for him to be taken out of the court in front of cameras of the world in handcuffs.
12:21In handcuffs, precisely.
12:23So, yes, these are the reasons why he will be put in prison a little bit later on.
12:27But this decision does mean that he is going to prison because I believe a lot of French people would be watching this.
12:32And actually, this afternoon, you know, a lot of people, including myself, were watching this thinking,
12:37oh, you know, he's going to be handed some suspended sentence.
12:39He's never going to go to jail.
12:41Well, he is.
12:42And that, in a sense, is a very strong statement in itself to the independence of justice and to the fact that, indeed,
12:47the French court system still has considerable power and that no one is above the law in France.
12:52So these are, you know, a strong message in itself and quite, you know, quite a surprise.
12:57Now, what will probably happen, though, is that he will go to prison.
13:00He will probably not serve five years.
13:01He will, you know, quite rapidly be presented to a judge to discuss of this sentence.
13:07And that will potentially be changed into house arrest, for example.
13:12But he will indeed go to prison.
13:14And that in itself is quite important.
13:16And he will be the first French president, former French president to be put in jail.
13:21Paul Smith, let's bring you in as well.
13:24I want to ask you about Sarkozy's influence here in France in recent years.
13:30You know, despite his legal troubles, not just this case, several other cases.
13:34In fact, he's remained an influential figure in right wing politics.
13:39Can you explain a little bit more what his role has been like since he left office in 2012?
13:44Yeah.
13:45So he's, as you say, despite so many cases against him, he's been rather a Teflon figure, nonstick.
13:52I mean, it's these these things have have he's been accused of these things.
13:56He's had he's had to wear an electronic bracelet before.
13:58And yet he's remains influential.
14:01Some people on the right still see him as quite interesting to watch the Twitter feeds of all the the right wing politicians.
14:07Laurent Vauquier saying what a what a great statesman Sarkozy was, Eric Ciotti and all of them, even even Le Pen, who's rather more technical in the sense of this idea of of you going to prison, even though you're appealing.
14:22She's not so much supported him, but certainly said things.
14:25But it's it's it's despite the fact that he's had all these various cases pending against him.
14:31He's remained a very influential figure and not just on the right.
14:34We also know, of course, that that that Macron has turned Emmanuel Macron has at various points in his career as president has turned to Sarkozy for advice.
14:45And and so that kind of the aura of a former president is still there.
14:51And so that's that that's kept him in in the forefront.
14:54He's not been a figure that in most systems we'd imagine that somebody being disgraced in this way would be pushed to one side.
15:00But Sarkozy has managed to remain.
15:03And of course, in and up until late 2016 was a president was a candidate, sorry, to be reelected in 2017.
15:09So it hasn't until now, at least, stopped him from being very influential.
15:15He wrote a quite popular book recently as well.
15:18He's definitely stayed in the news cycle.
15:21You mentioned France's far right leader Marine Le Pen.
15:25She was also convicted on embezzlement charges, embezzling EU funds.
15:33And that means that she can't run for president in the upcoming French presidential election.
15:39She, like you said, has come out in defense of Sarkozy.
15:44How does this fit into this idea that Sarkozy is putting forward that this is a politically motivated trial,
15:53that he is being that it's some kind of witch hunt against him?
15:58It's it's a very it's a very prominent feature of of political trials in France.
16:06This idea that there's somebody whether you're on the left or the right and you're being put on trial,
16:11there's the idea that you are the victim of a system.
16:13Somebody somewhere wants you to go down for it.
16:16So either either to prison or actually Le Pen could be eligible to stand.
16:22The she's there's the possibility of I think it's in January that her appeal is going to be held.
16:28So she could well actually run for the presidential election.
16:32But it is this this idea that the whole system is built around direction from somewhere else, which is rather different.
16:40Again, James was talking earlier about the the Anglo-Saxon mind.
16:44We don't quite see it that way, certainly not in the British system, although there is this idea of, you know, the system being rigged.
16:51But it's very much more pronounced in France, that idea that I'm the victim of some kind of either a cabal or influential figure who's put pressure on the judge.
17:02What is also important, of course, and I think Claire mentioned this, is that there's a 400 word, a 400 page judgment that we've got to sit down.
17:10Some of us will sit down and read through it with the details.
17:13But it is that idea to answer your question, Charlie, it's that idea that somebody somewhere wants this to happen.
17:20And that's very much part of this idea of the you know, there's there's some kind of of conspiracy behind that I'm I'm the victim of something.
17:29Well, James, maybe you can help us understand a little bit more about this case itself.
17:35We have talked a lot about the French justice system, about Sarkozy, but exactly how he got in this position with this case and how he got wrapped up with the deceased Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi.
17:49How did this happen?
17:51That's exactly what. In fact, the whole story starts with a visit in 2005.
17:54In 2005, at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy is the interior minister of France, and it is in a sense a surprising visit when you see it on the protocol level.
18:02Indeed, he goes as the French interior minister to visit Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
18:08Two men spend some time together.
18:10And so it is, you know, believed or at least this is part of the this is something that, you know, has not been proved during this trial, but it is widely believed.
18:19And this is one, you know, that there would have been discussions about Muammar Gaddafi financing Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign at that moment.
18:26Two men speaking in private, you know, this is the concept.
18:30And then that in, you know, in exchange for this, indeed, Nicolas Sarkozy would help Muammar Gaddafi get back onto the international stage.
18:38At that stage, he's a pariah. There's been, you know, he's accused of having organized the Lockerbie plane attack as well as a plane attack, which is called the UTA DC 10 attack in which 53 French people died.
18:54And he also asks Gaddafi, this is what, once again, this is what's alleged, that his son-in-law, who's Abdallah Senussi, who's the head of the secret service, military secret service, and also very important member of Gaddafi's entourage, be, you know, basically left alone by the French justice because he's been condemned by the French justice to life in prison because of the plane attack, the DC 10 UTA air attack.
19:22And so, indeed, you know, in exchange for these favors, Sarkozy would get money for his campaign.
19:28That was what is widely believed.
19:30Then, over the years, in the following two years, indeed, there is money transfer and, as we know, Nicolas Sarkozy gets elected to the presidency.
19:43When you take the whole court case, what you realize is that he, indeed, he only falls for one of the four items, which is conspiracy.
19:50Because, indeed, basically, the court was never able to prove that he benefited directly or that he actually was, had, I'd say, complete knowledge of what was going on.
20:00There were no gold bars found in a closet somewhere.
20:03Well, there were actually gold bars, but no, or actually, you know, a lot of wads of cash, I'd say, that were found on some of his close affiliates and people who are part of this investigation.
20:12But not him directly. He is considered to be the one who benefited from all of this.
20:17And, well, this is what we are seeing fold out today, is that, indeed, according to the court, well, all this happened.
20:23And, indeed, it was made public in 2012 by Mediapart.
20:26Mediapart, so this is this online media, investigative media.
20:31And Mediapart did publish this note and were actually attacked in court by Sarkozy and his entourage, saying that this was a fake.
20:42And in court, repeatedly, it was recognized that, actually, this document was not forged and was actually legitimate.
20:49But then, funnily enough, today we're hearing in court that they consider that it's probably fake.
20:53That's something which is quite unclear.
20:55But, in any case, this is where the actual formal investigation starts and finishes, as I say, you know, after 10 years.
21:02It took 10 years to investigate this with Nicolas Sarkozy being condemned to five years in prison.
21:09Okay, so 10 years.
21:11Claire Pacalant, I want to come back to you at the courthouse to wrap up this conversation and tell us, what can we expect next?
21:18The court says the sentencing date will take place at a later time.
21:22So, what should we be watching for?
21:28Nicolas Sarkozy is, of course, appealing.
21:32And he said he will work until his very last coin to clear his name.
21:37So, the fight is not over yet, not according to Nicolas Sarkozy, very much defiant when he spoke to the press a little earlier on.
21:47But that surprise decision by the judge to enforce this sentence and this judgment immediately really, really was something that took...
21:55It really got the impression that it took Sarkozy and his allies by surprise.
22:00It's not something that the prosecution had asked for.
22:03He's now got a short amount of time to get his affairs in order, present himself to a judge and to find out what happens next, when he will go behind bars.
22:12Of course, as James mentioned, he will very likely, very soon after going behind bars, request to see a judge and try to get his sentence amended.
22:21Perhaps he will go into house arrest.
22:22Perhaps he will wear an electronic tag.
22:25But initially, Nicolas Sarkozy has said that if they want me to sleep in prison, I will sleep in prison with my head held high.
22:32My colleagues, Claire Pachelot and James André, and I want to thank also French politics expert Paul Smith for joining us for this discussion, historic story here in France and breaking it all down.
22:46Appreciate all of your time.
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